Rs 309cr civic bill for CM

Mayor Sovan Chatterjee has placed a bill of Rs 309 crore on the table of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

The cash-starved state government, the biggest defaulter on the civic body's list, has been asked to pay up its unpaid property tax of around Rs 128 crore, around Rs 162 crore as interest on the outstanding sum and Rs 18 crore as penalty for non-payment.

The civic body's demand letter to the chief secretary and other senior officials, which follows the chief minister's move to take away some crucial departments from the mayor, points to the fact that the government could save around Rs 100 crore if it settles the dues while the scheme to waive interest on outstanding property tax is in force till April 30.

Under the scheme, the civic body is entitled to 50 per cent waiver of the interest and 95 per cent waiver of the penalty.

The amount the government owes to the civic body ' Rs 309,80,09,737 ' is around 22 per cent of the total outstanding property tax of Rs 1,357 crore.

"This is the first time the civic body has approached the chief secretary for dues," said a Calcutta Municipal Corporation official. The letter was sent to the officials on February 2.

What steps can the CMC take against a tax defaulter after the waiver scheme lapses? Sections 219-222 of the CMC Act 1980 empower the civic authorities to issue warrants for spot payment, recover the dues by selling movable properties in the compound and finally attach the errant premises for sale, said an assessment department official.

"But till date the civic body's attempts at recovering property tax dues have been restricted to issuing warrants for spot payments, which most owners ignore. Selling or attaching properties is unheard of in the CMC annals," the official said.

Mayor Chatterjee attributed the whopping dues to the erstwhile Left Front board's failure to collect tax from the then Left Front government, a charge predecessor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya denied.

"The government departments did not pay any property tax during the 20 years of Left Front rule at the civic body," claimed Chatterjee.

Bhattacharyya's reply: "During my tenure (2005-2010), property tax bills used to be sent to various government departments. Some often made the payment. Around Rs 10 crore of property tax was deposited when I was mayor."

Now that the civic body has written to the chief secretary for the dues, what does the government intend to do?

"We are verifying the budgetary allocations of various departments," said municipal affairs and urban development minister Firhad Hakim.

The minister for fire service, civil defence and disaster management, Javed Ahmed Khan, said he had asked his officials to collect a "letter of intimation" from the civic body so that dues could be paid in accordance with the waiver scheme.

There are 2,065 state government premises across the city, most of which are owned by the excise, fire, health, housing, jail, power, transport and education departments.

Civic chief manager (revenue) Bhaskar Ghosh said the top three government defaulters were the Calcutta Improvement Trust (Rs 56 crore), Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (Rs 45 crore) and the public works department (Rs 22 crore).

The fire department is the lowest defaulter, owing Rs 1,29,000 to the civic body.

Civic sources ruled out any link between sending the demand letter to the government and Mamata's decision to "ease the mayor's workload". Under the chief minister's order, Chatterjee had handed over the slum development, assessment and collection and market departments to three mayoral council colleagues.